Orange Cranberry Scones

I am down to a small handful of cereal (plus crumbs), and one packet of dinosaur egg oatmeal (to be saved for emergencies, or cold weather). The yogurt is gone. I had pancakes, toast, and scrambled eggs at various points over the weekend. Needless to say, the breakfast options for this morning were very few, indeed. So I was quite lucky to run across a recipe for scones before my hunger zapped my capacity for all rational thought. (Sneaking crumbles of dough as I made the scones also helped stave off said hunger.)

Admittedly, that first recipe, that brilliant beacon of an idea to the half-starved (or thereabouts) called for unholy amounts of butter. You know how I am about butter. Yet Fate would not allow me to despair! It just so happened that, while checking my favorite food blogs, I saw a link that took me to another link that took me... to scones. Scones with not 1/3 cup of butter... but three little tablespoons. I rejoiced! (Or mostly, my stomach growled in approval.)

I was a little bit skeptical about using a mix of whole wheat and white flour, just because whole wheat sometimes makes things... not as delicious (compare a partially whole wheat flour pizza crust to an all-white flour crust, for instance). But I trusted my recipe in the end, and got ten beautiful scones because of it – scones you wouldn't have any idea were lightened up, because they tasted so good.

Plus, I got to drink the leftover, fresh-squeezed orange juice, which is always my favorite part. And, now I have something to eat tomorrow morning before my eight AM discussion section.

Cast Iron Skillet Corn Bread

I'd been wanting a cast iron for a really long time, and last weekend, my mom bought one for me! I hefted its weight gleefully in my hands, imagining all the recipes I could finally make, the ones I'd been drooling over for the last couple of years.

Let me tell you something: the cast iron skillet does not disappoint. I've used it twice already, and it makes your food look beautiful and all the more delicious.

Or maybe that's just because I've been so excited about the novelty of the thing.

I made some cornbread molasses rolls on Thursday, which, while I didn't take a picture because it was too dark (and I was stressed about having to write a seven-page paper), I will definitely make again and share with you. Today, after waking up hungry at one in the afternoon, I went for some good old fashioned corn bread.

Here's just a hint. This recipe isn't very healthy. I've been in the mood for fatty things lately.



(There's another picture if you read more.)

An Old Favorite: Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

I seem to have a penchant for cooking on Saturday mornings. (I also seem to have a penchant for the word penchant. Although, every time I use it, I get paranoid, and am reminded of that scene in The Princess Bride with Inigo, Fezzik, and Vizzini, where Vizzini keeps crying, "Inconceivable!" And Inigo says, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.")

This Saturday morning, I decided to go for an old favorite: lemon poppy seed muffins. The recipe I usually use is meant for making bread, instead of muffins, but lemon poppy seed bread takes forty-five minutes to bake, whereas their muffiny counterparts take about twenty. And I was hungry.

Due to a shortage of normal-sized muffin tins, and a surplus of muffin batter, I ended up getting twelve normal-sized, albeit overflowing, muffins, and twelve mini muffins. I was a bit overzealous on the filling up of the normal muffin tin, and filled each cup almost to the top. So theoretically, I might have gotten another batch of mini muffins if I'd been a bit less careless. I was also out of muffin-tin liners. As a consequence, we are really now almost out of PAM.*

* We were only almost out of PAM before. Not really almost.

Whole Wheat Pear Pancakes

I love treating myself to a pancake breakfast every once in a while. Whether it's on a Saturday morning like today, or in the quick half hour before I have to catch the next bus to class, pancakes are always worth making. Pair them with scrambled eggs, or just a simple bowl of yogurt, in the end, you'll feel full and satisfied.

A few days ago, in that 'quick half hour' mentioned above, I tried out a recipe for whole wheat pancakes, which were surprisingly good. I decided, though, that they could be even better if I combined them with another recipe I'd found, which adds grated pears to the batter.

This morning seemed like the perfect time to try them out.